I'll admit, I'm suprised there are that many. Of course I don't mean that to slight the Oriental Orthodox, I certainly don't think that numbers validates or invalidates a religious group. It's just that I was under the impression that Egypt had the largest Oriental Orthodox population in the world, and they had only about 8 million there. I could be way off base here though.

Adherents.com puts the number 20 and 40 million (both 1990's numbers). Would you say that there are more than that Salpy? I'm under the impression that most Russians are Orthodox (by affiliation, anyway).

The factbook then puts the number of Russians at 140 million, with about 20% being Orthodox Christian. It then admits the number may be actually bigger when one considers the number of non-practicing adherents. The numbers here are more recent:

Who knows what the real numbers are. One wonders how accurate these things are. However, if my math is right (and it may not be) it seems the number of Ethiopian Orthodox may be greater than the number of Russian Orthodox.

Adherents.com puts the number 20 and 40 million (both 1990's numbers). Would you say that there are more than that Salpy? I'm under the impression that most Russians are Orthodox (by affiliation, anyway).

That's about right. About 33 million are affiliated with the Ethiopian Orthodox church.

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Out of a total population of 74 million, between 40 and 45 percent now belongs to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, concentrated in the northern regions of Tigray and Amhara. Approximately 45 percent is Sunni Muslim, centered in the eastern Somali and Afar regions, as well as Oromia. Another 10 percent of the population is Christian Evangelical and Pentecostal, the fastest growing religious group in the country. Catholics number around 750,000.

The Russian Federation is a much, much larger and more diverse country (something like 100 different ethnic groups and scores of languages/religions). Anyway, some polls suggest that the Orthodox adherent population is as low as 60 percent. If you take it that low, then you'd still have at least 85 million Orthodox.

« Last Edit: November 01, 2009, 07:14:21 PM by pensateomnia »

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But for I am a man not textueel I wol noght telle of textes neuer a deel. (Chaucer, The Manciple's Tale, 1.131)

The factbook then puts the number of Russians at 140 million, with about 20% being Orthodox Christian. It then admits the number may be actually bigger when one considers the number of non-practicing adherents.

That number is probably a guess at what percentage actually attend church now and again (i.e. at least a few times a year). Self-identified statistics are much higher. The lowest I've seen is 60%. Usually it's more like 70%, as in this most recent report from the US State Department:

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2006 Report on International Religious Freedom

The country has a total area of 6,592,769 square miles, and its population is approximately 142.8 million. There were no reliable statistics that break down the population by denomination. Available information suggested approximately 70 percent of the residents considered themselves Russian Orthodox Christians, although the vast majority were not regular churchgoers. There were an estimated fourteen to twenty-three million Muslims, constituting approximately 14 percent of the population and forming the largest religious minority. The majority of Muslims lived in the Volga-Urals region--which included Tatarstan and Bashkortostan--and the North Caucasus, although Moscow, St. Petersburg, and parts of Siberia had notable Muslim populations as well. The Muslim communities in the Volga-Urals region and the North Caucasus are culturally and in some cases theologically distinct from one another and therefore must be considered separate communities.

According to the Slavic Center for Law and Justice, Protestants made up the second largest group of Christian believers, with approximately 3,500 organizations and more than 2 million followers. An estimated 600,000 to 1 million Jews (0.5 percent of the population) remained, following large-scale emigration over the last two decades; the Federation of Jewish Communities (FJC) estimated that up to 500,000 Jews lived in Moscow and 100,000 in St. Petersburg. These estimates significantly exceeded the results of the official government census. Between 5,000 and 7,000 Jews lived in the so-called Jewish Autonomous Oblast (region), located in the Far East. The Catholic Church estimated that there were from 600,000 to 1.5 million Catholics in the country, figures that also exceeded government estimates. Buddhism is traditional to three regions: Buryatiya, Tuva, and Kalmykiya; and the Buddhist Association of Russia estimated there were between 1.5 and 2 million Buddhists. In some areas, such as Yakutiya and Chukotka, pantheistic and nature-based religions were practiced independently or alongside other religions.

There are close to 45-48 million Orthodox Tewahdo's in Ethiopia . 2.5 million (out of 4.2) million in Eritrea. if I am right, there are somewhere between 12-15 million Copts throughout the world (I believe ~ 4 million in the diaspora). I am afraid those numbers in the CIA factbooks or elsewhere are faulty.

Some have moved to the Republic of Armenia since its independence. I know some people who have done that. Many or most diaspora Armenians, however, while feeling a connection to Armenia, are content to stay where they are. You have to remember that most diaspora Armenians are descended from survivors of the Genocide, who were driven from their homes in what is today Eastern Turkey (Western Armenia.) When I was growing up, that is what my grandfather referred to as the homeland. So while there is a connection to the Republic of Armenia, it is not the ancestral place of origin of many Armenians in the diaspora.

The most common figure I've seen for Oriental Orthodox collectively is ~75 million.

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